Anxiety Stress and Coping最新文献

Background: Although there is growing evidence supporting the association between intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and psychopathology, little is known about the covariation of IU and psychological distress day-to-day. The purpose of this ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study was to examine negative emotional and somatic correlates of trait IU and daily uncertainty, while investigating how a source of stability, meaning in life (MIL), might buffer against deleterious effects of IU and uncertainty.

Design and methods: Adult community members (n = 62) from a mid-size town in the Rocky Mountain region completed baseline measures of IU and MIL and ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of meaning, uncertainty, affect, and somatic symptoms over the course of one week.

Results: Results indicate individuals high in trait IU experience more uncertainty day-to-day and greater distress when they feel uncertain compared to individuals lower in trait IU; however, MIL plays a stronger protective role for high IU compared to low IU individuals.

Conclusions: These findings support and extend previous research showing IU is associated with psychological distress and that MIL may be a critical resource to cultivate. Interventions promoting meaning day-to-day may reduce the effects of uncertainty on the well-being of those highly intolerant of uncertainty.

Background and objectives: Stress is not inherently negative. As youth will inevitably experience stress when facing the various challenges of adolescence, they can benefit from developing a stress-can-be-enhancing mindset rather than learning to fear their stress responses and avoid taking on challenges. We aimed to verify whether a rapid intervention improved stress mindsets and diminished perceived stress and anxiety sensitivity in adolescents.

Design and methods: An online experimental design randomly exposed 233 Canadian youths aged 14-17 (83% female) to four videos of the Stress N' Go intervention (how to embrace stress) or to control condition videos (brain facts). Validated questionnaires assessing stress mindsets, perceived stress, and anxiety sensitivity were administered pre- and post-intervention, followed by open-ended questions.

Results: The intervention content successfully instilled a stress-can-be-enhancing mindset compared to the control condition. Although Bayes factor analyses showed no main differences in perceived stress or anxiety sensitivity between conditions, a thematic analysis revealed that the intervention helped participants to live better with their stress.

Conclusions: Overall, these results suggest that our intervention can rapidly modify stress mindsets in youth. Future studies are needed to determine whether modifying stress mindsets is sufficient to alter anxiety sensitivity in certain adolescents and contexts.

Background: It is unclear if protective childhood experiences (PCEs), like emotional support and economic stability, exert influence on adulthood adjustment. Prior research suggests PCEs can promote childhood resilience through increased social connection. In contrast, research has demonstrated potential life-long negative impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on psychological health. This study examined the role of PCEs and ACEs in psychological symptoms following potentially traumatic events (PTE) in adults.

Methods: Participants (N = 128) were adults admitted to two Level 1 Trauma Centers following violence, motor-vehicle crashes, or other accidents. Participants reported childhood experiences and completed assessments of depression, PTSD, and social support at one, four, and nine months post-PTE.

Results: Structural Equation Modeling was used to simultaneously model PCEs and ACEs as predictors of psychological symptoms over time, with potential mediation through social support. PCEs overall did not directly affect psychological symptoms nor indirectly through social support. However, the emotional support component of PCEs had an indirect effect on psychological symptoms at baseline through social support. ACEs predicted greater psychological symptoms at baseline and over time.

Conclusion: PCEs consisting of childhood emotional support indirectly promote adjustment in adults after PTEs through initial social support, while ACEs exert direct effects on psychological symptoms.

Background and objectives: People commonly report positive changes following stressful experiences (perceived posttraumatic growth; PPTG), yet whether PPTG validly reflects positive changes remains unestablished.

Design and methods: We tested the extent to which COVID-19 pandemic-related PPTG relates to positive changes in corresponding psychosocial resources in a national US sample participating in a five wave study (T1-T5), focusing here on T2-T5: ns = 712-860. We examined correlations between resource change (both latent and observed difference scores) and PPTG at each occasion and conducted structural equation models to separate occasion-specific and stable (traitlike) PPTG variance. We related changes in resources to occasion-specific and stable PPTG components.

Results: Associations between change scores and occasion-specific PPTG were sparse, providing limited evidence of PPTG validity. Associations between change scores and stable PPTG tended to be positive and stronger than associations for occasion-specific PPTG.

Discussion: Perceptions of growth were largely unrelated to experienced positive changes and thus appear to be largely illusory. However, a personality-like tendency to believe one grows from stressful experiences relates more strongly to actual resource growth. These results suggest that people are not accurate reporters of positive changes they experience and that interventions aimed at promoting post-traumatic growth may be premature.

Background: Given the sensitive nature of COVID-19 beliefs, evaluating them explicitly and implicitly may provide a fuller picture of how these beliefs vary based on identities and how they relate to mental health.

Objective: Three novel brief implicit association tests (BIATs) were created and evaluated: two that measured COVID-19-as-dangerous (vs. safe) and one that measured COVID-19 precautions-as-necessary (vs. unnecessary). Implicit and explicit COVID-19 associations were examined based on individuals' demographic characteristics. Implicit associations were hypothesized to uniquely contribute to individuals' self-reports of mental health.

Methods: Participants (N = 13,413 US residents; April-November 2020) were volunteers for a COVID-19 study. Participants completed one BIAT and self-report measures. This was a preregistered study with a planned internal replication.

Results: Results revealed older age was weakly associated with stronger implicit and explicit associations of COVID-as-dangerous and precautions-as-necessary. Black and Asian individuals reported greater necessity of taking precautions than White individuals (with small-to-medium effects); greater education was associated with greater explicit reports of COVID-19-as-dangerous and precautions-as-necessary with small effects. Replicated relationships between COVID-as-dangerous explicit associations and mental health had very small effects.

Conclusions: Implicit associations did not predict mental health but there was evidence that stronger COVID-19-as-dangerous explicit associations are weakly associated with worse mental health.

While much research exists linking stress and suicidality in cross-sectional paradigms, little is known regarding the longitudinal interplay of stress and suicidality across time. In addition, less research exists on suicidal ideation - a transdiagnostic precursor to suicidal behavior. Two competing, though not mutually exclusive, explanations relate to stress exposure, where stress causes suicidal ideation, and stress generation, where suicidal ideation causes stress. The present study examined 101 adults self-reporting symptoms of borderline personality disorder. Participants completed a self-report measure of suicidal ideation and a life stress interview in a three-wave design over the course of one year. Cross-lagged panel analyses were used to examine the longitudinal relationships between suicidal ideation and interpersonal/non-interpersonal chronic life stress, as well as dependent/interpersonal episodic life stress. Results supported chronic and episodic interpersonal stress generation for suicidal ideation, although not across all timepoints.

Background and objectives: Although dispositional optimism and pessimism have been prospectively associated with health outcomes, little is known about how these associations manifest in everyday life. This study examined how short-term optimistic and pessimistic expectations were associated with psychological and physiological stress processes.

Methods: A diverse sample of adults (N = 300) completed a 2-day/1-night ecological momentary assessment and ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) protocol at ∼45-minute intervals.

Results: Moments that were more optimistic than typical for a person were followed by moments with lower likelihood of reporting a stressor, higher positive affect (PA), lower negative affect (NA), and less subjective stress (SS). Moments that were more pessimistic than typical were not associated with any affective stress outcome at the following moment. Neither optimism nor pessimism were associated with ABP, and did not moderate associations between reporting a stressor and outcomes.

Discussion: These findings suggest that intraindividual fluctuations in optimistic and pessimistic expectations are associated with stressor appraisals.

Background and objectives: Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is the fear of consequences of anxiety-related sensations, and has been linked to the development of panic symptoms. Distress tolerance (DT) encompasses one's behavioral or self-perceived ability to handle aversive states. We examined whether higher DT buffers the relationship between AS and changes in panic symptoms across two timepoints, spaced ∼three weeks apart.

Design and methods: At Time 1, 208 participants completed questionnaires and a physical DT task (breath-holding duration), a cognitive DT task (anagram persistence), and a self-report measure of DT (perceived DT). Panic symptoms were assessed at both timepoints. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate two models in which AS and DT predicted changes in panic.

Results: Contrary to hypotheses, for those with longer breath-holding duration (higher physical DT), higher fears of physical anxiety-related sensations (higher physical AS) were associated with worse panic outcomes over time.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that those with lower physical DT may have been less willing to engage with difficult tasks in the short-term. Although disengagement in the short-term may provide temporary relief, it is possible that averse psychopathological consequences stemming from rigid or habitual avoidance of distressing states may develop over longer periods of time.

Background and objectives: The role of anxiety as a risk factor for compulsive exercise elements among adolescents is unclear. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU), which is a risk feature for anxiety and eating disorders, may be an important, unexplored risk factor for compulsive exercise dimensions. This study aimed to examine the role of IU dimensions and anxiety on compulsive exercise elements. Given previous evidence indicating gender differences in compulsive exercise and IU levels, gender was included as a moderator.

Design/methods: A total of 201 adolescent girls and 207 adolescent boys completed the following questionnaires: Eating Disorder Inventory-3, Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-12 (IUS-12), a brief version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Compulsive Exercise Test (CET).

Results: The hierarchical regression analyses showed that the interaction between IUS-Prospective and gender emerged as a significant predictor of CET-Avoidance and CET-Weight control exercise beyond symptoms of eating disorders and anxiety. Post hoc analysis revealed that the IUS-Prospective was a significant predictor of CET-Avoidance and CET-Weight Control among boys, but not among girls.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that prospective IU may contribute towards obsessive-compulsive attitudes towards exercise among adolescent population, specifically among boys.

Background and objective: Mindsets about stress can be altered so that people interpret stress as either a positive or negative force. We exposed participants to a stress mindset intervention to test its effects on a challenging speech production task.

Design and method: Participants (N = 60) were randomly assigned to a stress mindset condition. In the stress-is-enhancing (SIE) condition, they viewed a brief video that characterized stress as a positive force that benefits performance. In the stress-is-debilitating (SID) condition, the video characterized stress as a negative force that should be avoided. Each participant completed a self-report measure of stress mindset, performed a psychological stressor task, and then repeatedly produced tongue twisters aloud. Speech errors and articulation time were scored for the production task.

Results: The manipulation check confirmed that stress mindsets were altered after viewing the videos. Participants in the SIE condition articulated the phrases more quickly than those in the SID condition without an accompanying increase in errors.

Conclusions: A stress mindset manipulation affected speech production. This finding indicates that one way to mitigate the negative effects of stress on speech production is to instantiate beliefs that stress is a positive force that can enhance performance.